The Philippines, officially known as the Republic of the Philippines, is a sovereign island country in Southeast Asia situated in the western Pacific Ocean.  It consists of 7,107 islands that are categorized broadly under three main geographical divisions:  Luzon, Visayas,  and Mindanao.  Its capital city is Manila while its most populous city is Quezon City; both are part of Metro Manila.  To the north of the Philippines across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan; Vietnam sits west across the South China Sea; southwest is the island of Borneo across the Sulu Sea, and to the south the Celebes Sea separates it from other islands of Indonesia; while to the east it is bounded by the Philippine Sea and the island-nation of Palau.  Its location on the Pacific Ring of Fire and close to the equator makes the Philippines prone to earthquakes and typhoons, but also endows it with abundant natural resources and some of the world's greatest biodiversity.  At approximately 300,000 square kilometers (115,831 sq mi), the Philippines is the 64th-largest country in the world.  With a population of about 100 million people, the Philippines is the seventh-most populated country in Asia and the 12th most populated country in the world.  An additional 12 million Filipinos live overseas, comprising one of the world's largest diasporas.  Multiple ethnicities and cultures are found throughout the islands.  The arrival of Ferdinand Magellan in Homonhon, Eastern Samar in 1521 marked the beginning of Spanish colonization.  In 1543, Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos named the archipelago Las Islas Filipinas in honor of Philip II of Spain.  With the arrival of Miguel López de Legazpi from Mexico City, in 1565, the first Spanish settlement in the archipelago was established.  The Philippines became part of the Spanish Empire for more than 300 years.  This resulted in the predominant religion in the country being Roman Catholicism  Read extensive article and see many pictures at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippines

The basis for the Philippine national language is Tagalog, which had primarily been spoken only in Manila and the surrounding provinces when the Commonwealth constitution was drawn up in the 1930s.  That constitution provided for a national language, but did not specifically designate it as Tagalog because of objections raised by representatives from other parts of the country where Tagalog was not spoken.  It merely stated that a national language acceptable to the entire populace (and ideally incorporating elements from the diverse languages spoken throughout the islands) would be a future goal.  Tagalog, of course, by virtue of being the lingua franca of those who lived in or near the government capital, was the predominant candidate.  By the time work on a new constitution began in the early 1970s, more than half the Philippine citizenry was communicating in Tagalog on a regular basis.  Neologisms were introduced to enrich the vocabulary and replace words that were of foreign origin.  In the constitution composed during the Aquino presidency in the latter half of the 1980s, the national language was labeled Filipino to acknowledge and embrace the existence of and preference for many English- and Spanish-derived words.  "Western" letters such as f, j, c, x and z—sounds of which were not indigenous to the islands before the arrival of the Spaniards and the Americans—were included in the official Filipino alphabet.  http://tagaloglang.com/The-Philippines/Language/filipino-tagalog-pilipino.html

Tagalog is an Austronesian language with about 57 million speakers in the Philippines, particularly in Manila, central and southern parts of Luzon, and also on the islands of Lubang, Marinduque, and the northern and eastern parts of Mindoro.  Tagalog speakers can also be found in many other countries, including Canada, Guam, Midway Islands, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, UK and USA.  Tagalog used to be written with the Baybayin alphabet, which probably developed from the Kawi script of Java, Bali and Sumatra, which in turn descended from the Pallava script, one of the southern Indian scripts derived from Brahmi.  Today the Baybayin alphabet is used mainly for decorative purposes and the Latin alphabet is used to write to Tagalog.  The name Tagalog derives from tagá-ílog, which means "resident beside the river".  Little is known of the history of the language before the arrival of the Spanish in the Philippines during the 16th century as no earlier written materials have been found.  Find the two alphabets, text samples, and pronunciations at http://www.omniglot.com/writing/tagalog.htm

Singapore, Michigan had busy sawmills, hotels, general stores and a wildcat bank that outshone The Flats to the south, as Saugatuck was known then.  When the timber was depleted, the people drifted away and nature reclaimed the site.  Singapore was established in 1836 by New York speculator Oshea Wilder and the first mill there was cutting more than 300,000 board feet of lumber a month by the summer of 1839.  In 1850, Francis Stockbridge, later a U.S. Senator who helped build the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, bought one of the sawmills in Singapore.  He and lumber baron Otis Johnson greatly benefitted from the 1871 fires that destroyed Chicago and Holland, but the demand for timber soon depleted the Allegan County forests.  Singapore’s main mill was moved to St. Ignace in 1875.  That spelled the end for a town that had boasted a population of several hundred.  Most of the buildings were moved or dismantled.  Perhaps ten buildings were relocated to Saugtauck, including the Singapore Bank Building on Butler Street that houses a bookstore and gallery, and several other houses.  Stripped of timber and blown by a near-constant west wind off the lake, the dune between Singapore and the lake enveloped the town’s streets and buried all but the tallest structure.  Eventually, that too, was hidden.  A new river channel was built in 1906.  Nearby cottages, half-covered in sand into the 1930s, later helped give rise to the story of a buried town.  See pictures and map at http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2011/08/legend_of_lost_mill_city_burie.html  

See also http://www.aplacecalledroam.com/home/ghost-of-a-town-haunts-saugatucks-sand-dunes and http://sdhistoricalsociety.org/sites/dunes/singapore.htm   

The first schoolhouse in Michigan was built in Singapore.  http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/mi/singapore.html

Robert McCloskey (1914-2003) was born in Hamilton, Ohio.  McCloskey took an early interest in the arts.  He took piano lessons, and, in his high school years, he taught a soap carving and model airplane class at Hamilton’s YMCA.  In addition to the piano, McCloskey played the drums, oboe, and the harmonica.  As McCloskey’s devotion to creation through art grew, he began expressing himself through drawing, painting and, of course, sculpture. McCloskey said, “I was carving larger and larger things, from bars of soap to trunks of trees.”  While a counselor at YMCA Camp Campbell Gard, McCloskey carved a totem pole.  The success of the totem pole project eventually led to his first significant commission in 1934, to design the bas-reliefs and cast aluminum pieces decorating Hamilton’s new municipal building.  McCloskey was only nineteen, but he already exhibited the skill and devotion to work in a variety of mediums.  Throughout high school McCloskey illustrated the Hamilton High School annual and worked on the George Washington Bicentennial Calendar for the American History Club.  He accepted a scholarship to the Vesper George Art School in Boston.  As a professional artist, McCloskey moved to New York and entered the National Academy of Design.  He exhibited his work and was given the President's Award; he also had exhibits at the Tiffany Foundation and at the Society of Independent Artists in Boston.  A fictional Alto, Ohio, was the setting for McCloskey’s first book, Lentil, published in 1940.  Lentil tells the adventure of a young boy who, saddened that he couldn’t sing, learns to play the harmonica.  It was around this time that he began work on his second and perhaps best-known book, Make Way for Ducklings, which won the Caldecott Medal in 1942.  In the story, a mother duck searches the streets of Boston for a safe place to raise her young.  McCloskey began the book by recalling the hilarious scenes of ducks crossing grid-locked Boston streets.  To illustrate the detailed movements of his characters with authenticity, McCloskey bought a half-dozen southern mallards at a city market from a poultry dealer.  He spent the next few weeks crawling around his studio, watching the ducks and sketching them as they waddled around the room.  He even put the ducks in a bathtub to sketch their swimming movements.  McCloskey rewrote the book over and over.  It took him several versions to come up with the right duck names (Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack).  Make Way for Ducklings has sold more than two million copies.  Though he started out as a musician and inventor, and then became an artist, McCloskey found another passion in writing.  He once told an interviewer that publishing Lentil was more exciting than winning the Caldecott Medals: "…it was as though I was sort of tied up in a paper bag or in a gunny sack with a rope around the neck of it, and all of a sudden…everything sort of spilled out!  Voom!"  http://www.hamiltonheritagehall.org/McCloskey_Museum/Bio_of_McCloskey.html  

The Muser won a caption contest (bragging rights only) sponsored by the American Association of Law Libraries.  She added to a picture from Make Way for Ducklings:  "Are you sure this is the way to the Peabody Hotel?"

July 3, 2015  Star Spangled Banner Spectacular, a repeat showing of the 200th anniversary of the program in Baltimore in 2014  This Land is Your Land (which I hadn't heard for some time) was featured at the beginning and the end of the show.  The 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky commemorated a war between Russia and France, but has been adopted for American celebrations--and the Tchaikovsky piece, about 15 minutes long, was arranged as an approximately 4-minute piece for the 2014 program.  See the entire show--1:56:46 and find list of pieces and performers at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/star-spangled-spectacular-program/3144/  Watch videos on the Star Spangled Banner from various cities at https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=star+spangled+spectacular

July 1, 2015  Back in February 2014, Andrea Cammelleri was cited for a violation when she left her pickup truck parked on a street in West Jefferson, Ohio.  That was because an ordinance in the village stated it was illegal to park “any motor vehicle camper, trailer, farm implement and/or non-motorized vehicle” on a street for more than 24 hours.  At a bench trial, Cammelleri argued that “the ordinance did not apply because the language prohibits a motor vehicle camper from being parked on the street for an extended period of time.”  “The trial court held that when reading the ordinance in context, it unambiguously applied to motor vehicles and ‘anybody reading [the ordinance] would understand that it is just missing a comma,'”  http://law.justia.com/cases/ohio/twelfth-district-court-of-appeals/2015/ca2014-04-012.html   Cammelleri was initially convicted, according to the Columbus Dispatch, but filed an appeal.  The village argued that the lack of a comma separating motor vehicle from camper was a typo and did not invalidate her violation.  But the court sided with Cammelleri.  Grammar counts, the judges said.  “By utilizing rules of grammar and employing the common meaning of terms, ‘motor vehicle camper’ has a clear definition that does not produce an absurd result,” Judge Hendrickson wrote in his ruling. 

 “If the village desires a different reading, it should amend the ordinance and insert a comma between the phrase ‘motor vehicle’ and the word ‘camper.'”  Sarah Larimer  http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/07/01/ohio-appeals-court-ruling-is-a-victory-for-punctuation-sanity/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1320  July 6, 2015  On this date in 1885, Louis Pasteur successfully tested his vaccine against rabies on Joseph Meister, a boy who was bitten by a rabid dog.  On this date in 1919, the British dirigible R34 landed in New York, completing the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by an airship.